![80 Mile Beach]()
80 Mile Beach
Day 42 & 43 - Thursday - Friday 3/8/01
Start & Stop - Rest days at 80 Mile Beach
80 Mile Beach is pretty much the start of the
Pilbara and for us has always been a favourite stopping point between
Broome and
Port Hedland. This year we found it much the same, but with an expanded capacity for campers. It's now one of the most popular stop-over points for passing tar-huggers so don't expect much peace! We had to laugh - you come so far from
home, yet end up camping closer to people than you live to your neighbours!
It's a great beach and usually you can catch treadfin salmon right through the season, best caught an hour either side of the high tide. During the low tide you can spend hours strolling
the beach for shells.
We had actually planned to spend our days fishing but had learned that no one was catching anything - the locals were saying it was "too cold for salmon", which seemed strange but it was a reason all the same. This caused us a little dilema however, as we had planned on catching enough fish to get ourselves
home, or at least to
Newman where we could get major supplies. At this point in our trip we had time on our side and no fixed itinery so it was difficult to estimate what we needed.
As always, we tried to plot a path back to
Perth along 4WD tracks, avoiding the main roads as much as possible and attempting to not back-track over roads we've previously driven. By Friday night we'd plotted a 3 day diversion off the beaten track taking in little-known gorges in the East
Pilbara near mining country. We had just enough decent food (without using the emergency rations) to make it. I must say however, that we don't eat poorly and even our emergency rations will make up a Vegetarian Moroccan casserole with damper, so we weren't stressed. We also seemed to have more alcohol and cold drinks than usual and plenty of baby food and custard!